This is coming from a team that had the option to take Vincent Lecavalier, Eric Staal, and Rick Nash.

But instead opted to ditch the #1 pick three times in roughly half a decade in favor of Viktor Kozlov (lol), Nathan Horton (lol), and Jay Blowmeester.

Meanwhile, the #1s turned out to be everything and more, with two of the three taking their respective Southeastern conference Tampa Bay Lightning and Carolina Hurricanes teams to win Stanley Cup championships.

Make no mistake, the Florida Panthers could've been a decent team for the past decade rather than the worst team over the past decade... if only they had better asset management.

*disclaimer* I know they wanted to take Bouwmeester over Nash #1 anyways, and that's why they made that trade. Nonetheless, Rick Nash is insignificant in the discussion of Lecavalier and Staal, as he's clearly the inferior franchise player.

Yup. And of course it's not like they had the option to take any of those names 4-8 at #9, but it actually gets a lot better 10-20. Guys like Steve Eminger and Alexander Semin by Washington, Keith Ballard, Chris Higgins!

Thankfully our draft in 2010 was no mistake so far. But I think something is really obvious. NEVER draft a defender top-3. Don't listen to the hype. It's ALWAYS wrong.

We will draw the line there as I'm still willing to give defenders past 2008 chances. To truly see this picture though, you have to go look at the caliber player drafted around all of these guys I listed. They're all stars, for the most part. The guys listed here are mostly scrubs or average players.

I was upset when we took Gudbranson.
And it's already starting to show.